Linklater, a versatile independent director known for original films ranging from the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight trilogy to the touchingly bizarre Bernie, was the father of a six-year-old daughter and began to wonder about the arc of childhood from the time the child begins going to school up until leaving home and entering the wider world at eighteen.

When he approached Patricia Arquette, who had worked with him on Fast Food Nation, to play the mother, he asked her, "So, what are you doing for the next twelve years?" At first she simply could not fathom what he was proposing.

Consider just a few of the potential difficulties involved: What if the promising young actor playing the central part turns out not to have the talent a few years later? What if something happens to one of the other principal actors? Or the director? Could the story be reworked to accommodate that? (I am told that Lorelei Linklater, the director's daughter, who plays Mason's sister Samantha, temporarily lost her enthusiasm for the project and suggested to her father that her character should be killed off. Happily, the mood passed.) The film would have to be a labor of love for all the principals; under California's De Havilland Law it is illegal to make contracts for longer than seven years. And how do you pitch such a production to secure the necessary funding, asking backers to come up with a lot of money now so that in thirteen years they might realize a profit from it? Acknowledging this difficulty, the witty Linklater told an interviewer that one solution might be to acknowledge that most independent movies lose money, then say, "With this one you'll lose money very slowly and by the end you won't even notice it." Finally, film and film technology are changing rapidly. Would it still look like the same film at the end?

So much has been written about this film, so many interviews conducted, that it is difficult not to have these questions in mind. The film was shot during periods of from three to five days each year, and I confess that when I went to see it, the filmmaker in me was looking for the seams.

There aren't any. Nor is there any intrusion of titles to let us know how much time has just passed. It all flows, and two hours and forty-five minutes seemed like an hour and a half.

Even more boldly, Linklater's script doesn't lean on the clich�s of mechanical plot development, and we find ourselves watching beautifully observed, often ordinary moments of real people's lives. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) grows from being a sweet, spontaneous little boy through awkward adolescence to reflective young manhood. There is an authenticity imparted by the fact that we are watching both the characters and the actors age twelve years. The traditional multiple casting would have put us at a further remove from the film. This has the added poignancy associated with realizing how rapidly time passes, just as we were told it would by older people when we were young and never really believed it.

I saw the film twice in as many days. Surprisingly, the time seemed to pass even more quickly the second time. The second audience was mostly older people. Their laughter enhanced the wonder of the experience. They laughed so frequently. It wasn't laughter at jokes or comic situations; it was the laughter of shared recognition, of memories retrieved and savored with joy.

Mason and his sister live with their divorced mother (the acting is fine throughout, but Patricia Arquette is truly outstanding, and she and Ellar Coltrane carry most of the film). She is trying to hold it all together as she deals with caring for two children, completing her education and pursuing a professional life. Her need for love brings her together with a series of men, all abusive in their own ways. The children's father (Ethan Hawke), charming, fun, and unreliable, offers his own brand of support and challenges. Mason comes to look at the adult world with increasing skepticism. He has his own first experience of love and loss. Intelligent, with plenty of creative potential, he has little sense of where he is heading, bridling at the suggestions of uncool adults and teachers who wish him well.

The film ends with his arrival at college and encounters with people we sense are going to become close friends. So much to figure out and discover, but he seems to be considering it all with considerable hope. Linklater has no need to tie it all up. The final setting is as open as the possibilities of Mason's young life.

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